How does China's industrial policy affect firms' RD investment? Evidence from 'China Manufacturing 2025'

Aimed at improving innovation capacity and upgrading technology of manufacturing industry, 'China Manufacturing 2025' (CM2025), which relies on selective industrial policies, has attracted great attention. This paper investigates the effects of CM2025 on firms' R&D investment using CEM-DID, a combination method based on the coarsened exact matching and the difference-in-difference. The method can effectively identify causal relationships without suffering from selection bias. Employing a panel data of 1,440 Chinese A-share listed firms from 2012 to 2018, we find firms with core business covered by the areas of CM2025 increase their R&D investment significantly after the policy intervention. Moreover, CM2025 significantly increases government subsidies and financial loans for treated firms, and both effects are larger for SOEs. This finding supports the critique that CM2025 goes against the competitive neutrality principle. No increase in innovation output but a decrease in TFP is found in the short-term. Our findings are enlightening for enacting better industrial policies.